The Medication Safety Programme aims to greatly reduce the number of New Zealanders harmed each year by medication errors in our hospitals, general practices, aged care facilities and across the entire health and disability sector.

Healthcare associated infection is one of the most frequent adverse events in health care worldwide. Up to 10 percent of patients admitted to modern hospitals in the developed world acquire one or more infections.

The February 2014 edition of Medication Safety Watch is now available online. This bulletin is for health professionals and health care managers working with medicines or patient safety. It contains information about medicine-related incidents, errors and adverse drug reactions and offers recommendations on how to improve medication safety.

This issue contains information on the following topics:

Off-label use of medicines

Transdermal patches alerts

US medication safety best practices

Incidents and cautions.

Click the link below to go to a downloadable PDF of Medication Safety Watch.